


creeping, clawing, crawling, and other things from deep within

by amaresu



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/pseuds/amaresu
Summary: Dick's been kidnapped.  By bat worshipping cultists.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Saving the City One Batman at a Time (A Batgirl and Robin Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196268) by [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan). 



Dick hears the chirping first. It’s so familiar that he thinks he’s back in the cave, listening to the bats as they woke up to head into the night. It’s a minute before he remembers that he’s been kidnapped and by then it’s too late to pretend he’s still unconscious, which messes up the standard protocol for kidnapping. 

It’s not long after that he feels soft fingers on his face, tracing the outline of his cowl, and a soft feminine voice says, “Open your eyes.”

He does, not because she told him to, but because it’s the easiest way to find out where he is. He takes in the room quickly, despite the dizziness that keeps him from sitting up. A side effect of whatever they’d given him to knock him out. The cell is small, but dry and well lit, surprising because he can still hear the bats. Only, now that he’s properly awake he can tell that the noise isn’t quite like the colony back at the cave. It sounds both closer and like he’s listening to it from down a long tunnel. The woman touching his face smiles at him, he can just see her lips underneath the hood of her robe.

It’s ceremonial. He’s a bit of an expert on ceremonial robes after all these years. They bare a resemblance to ones worn by a bat worshiping cult from the Deep South. Close enough that she’s either from a different branch of the same cult or they were inspired by the same thing. Where theirs are green hers are blue, but the cut is the same and they both have the hand stitched bat embroidery around the hem. 

He glares at her and she removes her hand, smoothing her robes as she leans back on her heels. “Can you hear them? You can can’t you?” She pulls back her hood as she speaks, enough that he can look at her face, see her pale blue eyes framed by dark red hair. If she hadn’t just participated in kidnapping him he’d ask her on a date. Instead he glares harder. 

Her eyes spark with excitement and she laughs as she stands. She walks towards the door with her heels clacking on the floor, “Sleep, your destiny will come soon enough. Let them in, the bonding will bring glory.”

He doesn’t sleep as the door closes behind her, instead pushes himself into a sitting position against the wall, dizziness leaving him slowly. It’s not the most ominous thing he’s ever been told after a kidnapping, but worrying. He puzzles over her words as the drugs work their way out of his system. The chirping of the bats still in his ear, only he can’t find the source.

It takes him longer than he would like to realize that the ‘them’ she had spoken of was the bats. It’s only after he utterly fails to find any sort of speaker or vent that would bring the noise to him that he puts it together. Which is also the point that he realizes that the noise is coming from inside his head, not outside. He’s familiar enough with psychic phenomena to not panic, but it’s disturbing nonetheless.

More so once he realizes they sound like they’re getting closer. It’s a slow process, but the chirping increases in volume the longer he sits in the room. The knowledge is what gets him moving to the door. He’d examined it earlier, but now he looks closer, trying to find the weak points he knows must be there. It’s solid wood reinforced with iron, but Dick is determined. He has a decently sized hole kicked in the door when he hears voices on the other side coming closer. He tries his best to get the hole big enough to climb through before the people get to him, but he doesn't make it. Instead he’s left to back into the room as the door opens to a group of cultists in the same ceremonial robes as the woman before.

The woman steps through the group to stand in front of him, she holds a can that he knows is an aerosol spray filled with whatever they’d used to knock him out originally. She smiles at him, sadly, and shakes her head as she lifts the canister, “You need to let them in. They will bring us all glory and you’re their destined vessel.”

It isn’t enough to knock him out again, but it’s enough that he’s down and unable to fight as the people grab him. He can feel them lifting him and moving him to another space. He can’t fight them, instead he tries not to panic as the chirping grows louder until it sounds like an entire colony of bats right behind him. Which is when the pricking starts. It feels like bats clawing at him, crawling up his back, scratching his skins, pulling like they’re climbing up his body. Only the scratching goes down into his skins. Down to his muscles and bones and somehow even further into his being.

He can’t help the cry that is pulled from his lips. It hurts, like a thousand creatures digging into his souls and making a home. He feels the touch of fingers on his face again and the woman whispers in his ear, “I know it hurts, but you need to be awake for the bonding. Let them in, welcome them, it’ll hurt less. Accept your place as their avatar.”

He can’t say anything in response, the feeling of claws burrowing into him too much, the sound of the bats too loud now. Dimly he can hear her laugh as he’s dropped on a table of some sort. He tries to fight as his arms and legs are tied down, but the cultists have no problem securing his limbs. 

He can’t tell how long he lays on the table. The longer it goes on the easier it is to tell what’s happening to him though. Deep down inside of him somewhere is a door and the bat creatures are coming through it, they pull themselves along him somehow. Pulling against a force trying to suck them back the other way. 

It’s hard to focus his mind right but eventually he can pinpoint where the bats are coming from and he screams when he sees it. It’s dark and wrong and filled with intelligence. Strange intelligence that can see him and dismisses him in the same moment. Dick is just the door they need to travel through.

He can sense their thoughts and feelings as they can sense his, motives too alien for him to truly understand, just leaving him with the knowledge that they will eat his world if they get through. Eat it, destroy it, and not notice as they pass on by. He’s not sure what the cultists think they’re bringing through, but he knows that these creatures won’t bring anyone glory. They won’t bring anything but death and worse they won’t even mean to or care that they did. He grabs the door inside of himself with all of his mental strength and tries to close it. 

It hurts, worse than the feeling of the creatures climbing into his mind and body, but he keeps pulling. He can’t let them through. He can feel the door starting to budge when the chanting starts. The chanting is definately coming from outside his body. He can’t make out the words, just witness their effect. It stops the door from moving, starts to pry it open wider and wider and he screams at the pain, screams louder as the pull the bat creatures were fighting against stops, then reverses itself. Now it’s now trying to pull them back it’s trying to pull them through, into his reality. 

He keeps fighting even if he’s half convinced he’s already dying. The best he can manage is to keep the door from opening any wider. He can’t close it, not even to what it was before the chanting started. It’s not good enough, not even close. The creatures are still piling in and filling him up tip to toe and near to bursting. He tries to push them back through, but he loses his grip on the door and few more burst through in the extra bit the chanting manages to push it open. 

He’s not going to win. He’s going to lose the battle and the bat creatures will escape. They won’t care about any of the people on the planet. They won’t care about the planet. And he can’t stop it. He can feel the rush of bat creatures start to slow, from a river to a trickle. It’s almost to the end and he doesn’t understand how they can all fit inside of him, but they do. He can feel them rustling deep inside. The chanting slows and just as Dick is sure that the bat creatures will escape and destroy the planet a window crashes. 

He only hears it dimly, but the chanting stops. It stops and suddenly he can grab the door firmly again. He can’t just close it anymore, too many bat creatures made it through the door and into him. But without the chanting he can start to throw them back. It’s hard, but it’s like the changing of the tide. He can hear a fight going on in the room around him and with each cultist removed from the equation the pull from the other place gets stronger and the bat creatures start falling back through the door. 

The pull becomes a rushing river going the other direction. The bat creatures try to hold onto him, but he knows how to fight them now. They don’t stand a chance as the last cultist falls. Dick knows he’s got one more battle to fight though. Doors go both ways and if he doesn’t get this one closed the world will be pulled through him into the other realm. It’s hard, the other side doesn’t want to the door closed, it wants Dick’s world, but he manages to slam the door just behind the last bat creature.

He feels emptied out and hollow. Scratched down to his core, but he can’t help but smile as he opens his eyes and sees Robin and Batgirl tying up the last of the cultists. They’re arguing over knot techniques. He’ll let them know he’s awake in a little bit, but for just a moment he wants to sit and watch what he saved.


End file.
